Instead of ramping up the usual highly competitive holiday messaging, the idea was to deviate from the expected and instead honor the spirit of the season by reaching out to new neighbors.

Dubbed ‘Peace on Fifth’, the initiative was aimed at being startling, real – and also humanizing for both tech companies. An inspiration was the Christmas Truce of 1914 which saw widespread but unofficial ceasefires on the Western Front. German and British soldiers laid down their arms to exchange food and souvenirs, and even engage in a friendly game of football. We wanted our gesture of goodwill to capture this spirit and inspire our followers to do the same. We would reach out to Apple with a song of peace, and lay down our arms, if only for the holidays.

The outreach would be captured by a video that followed Microsoft carolers from their own flagship office up 5th Avenue to Apple’s flagship.

In mid-November, Microsoft and the agency mapped out a plan to be jointly executed. The agency would reach out to buzzy ad trade, creative and NY-centric publications; Microsoft would focus on broadcast, tech outlets and bloggers, and on Microsoft and Apple influencers. Apple executives were quietly notified of the plans.

Components included filmed backstories of the initiative, imagery, YouTube links to a long-form video. The aim was to drive waves of attention. Target date for press launch: December 1. Advertising Age/Creativity were the first to break, quickly followed by all major ad/creative pubs, as well as by such tech pubs such as Tech Crunch, and by outreach that led to a prominent and cheekily positive NY Post piece. Broadcast coverage followed as did widespread tech blog chatter. All celebrated the fun and spirit of the initiative.

Within the first two days of debuting on Microsoft’s social channels, we saw incredible results with over 38 million potential impressions in social, and coverage in over 47 publications. We were also the number one trending story on Facebook. Based on our success in social, we opted to extend the video into a broadcast media buy the same week.

We set out to change the conversation, grow brand love and increase trust, and ended up creating a huge impact on the way people talk about Microsoft online. We boosted positive sentiment surrounding the brand by 5.4 percent in the first 24 hours – showing that our positive message of holiday cheer, haloing the human side of Microsoft really resonated with the web, not just in the US, but around the world as well.

Bridging the gap between two tech titans, Microsoft and Apple, who have historically been strong competitors (if not bitter rivals), was headline-worthy in and of itself. Bringing in 37 real Microsoft employees to perform a live carol on the doorstep of your competitor’s flagship store in front of a captive audience in the heart of New York City’s iconic 5th Avenue is something beyond words.

We wanted our message to reach the widest targets possible (touching on all of Microsoft’s key segments: Tech Setters, Cultural Curators, Productive Practicals, Mainstreamers) but we knew we’d have the biggest impact within the social sphere if we targeted both Microsoft and Apple fans, using their surprise and engagement to spread the word.

Key to keeping the goodwill real and human was finding the right carolers to deliver the message. A casting call went out to Microsoft employees and an amazing talent pool was uncovered, leading to the selection of strong singers from Microsoft stores across the country. They gathered together, meeting each other for the first time, at the new Flagship 5th Ave Store and as envisioned their enthusiasm about spreading holiday wishes down the street was genuine and moving.

Going into the 2015 holiday season there seemed to be a confluence of animosity in the air -- Republicans vs Democrats, Trump vs everybody, S&P in negative territory, constant media headlines involving disaster, corruption and incompetence , everybody vs everybody. Against this backdrop emerged a PR-led idea enabled by the fact that Microsoft had just opened its first Manhattan flagship retail store, located on 5th Avenue, blocks away from Apple’s own 5th Avenue showplace, and aimed at trying to change the conversation, if only for a while, between and about these two legendary rivals.

Microsoft had paved the way via a series of efforts to promote partnership and cross-platform functionality with the goal of making it easier to collaborate across any device. The internet blew up when Microsoft made an appearance at Apple’s 2015 keynote presentation, so there was an opportunity to extend the narrative and resonate with fans of both companies.